Top weddings of the year

Ebony, Feb, 2005 by Joy Bennett Kinnon

IT was a year of star-spangled brides and grooms, from Star Jones, the princess of daytime television, to the prince of praise, Byron Cage, from a prince of the gridiron, Eddie George, to a renowned female bishop.

The stars united in ceremonies that ranged from intimate gatherings of family and friends to guest lists with their own zip code.

The most publicized wedding of 2004 was simply a no-brainer as former star prosecutor-turned-star celebrity interviewer held court last November 13 at St. Bartholomew's Church in Manhattan in a fairy-tale wedding featuring a custom-made taffeta Reem Acra wedding gown with a 27-foottrain--longer, historians noted, than the late Princess Di's wedding gown train. According to published reports, Star's bridal jewelry included $450,000 earrings, a $225,000 tiara and a $25,000 rose-cut diamond chain (all provided by Fred Leighton). Simmons Jewelry designed her 7-carat princess-cut wedding band. The bride, born Starlet Marie Jones, has informed her family and friends she will now be known as Mrs. Al Reynolds.

The 60-person bridal party featured the bride's celebrity girlfriends, including Vanessa Bell Calloway, Natalie Cole, Vivica A. Fox, Lela Rochon-Fuqua, Holly Robinson-Peete, and Denise Rich. The 450 guests featured a veritable A-list of luminaries from Capitol Hill and the big and small screens, including Angela Bassett, Chris Rock and wife Malaak, Samuel L. Jackson, Barbara Walters and Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Patti LaBelle serenaded the couple with "My Love, Sweet Love" during their wedding ceremony.

Star and Al wed exactly one year from their first meeting, Nov. 13, 2003, at Alicia Keys' CD release party. The reception at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel featured lobster, crab and steak, and at one point, according to published reports, Reynolds serenaded his bride with "You Are My Kappa Sweetheart," accompanied by his fraternity brothers.

The groom is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The couple shared their first dance to "Fly Me to the Moon." After a 10-day honeymoon to exotic Dubai, on the Persian Gulf, the starlight couple planned to settle down and enjoy married life.

Star's wedding was not the only celebrity wedding in 2004; in fact, it was not even the largest. One of the largest featured gospel's "Prince of Praise" Byron Cage and his new bride, pediatric dentist Dr. Sonya Windham Cage, who wed before 1,000 guests at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Charlotte, N.C.

New Edition members Ricky Bell and Ralph Tresvant, best friends who opted for a double wedding, had one of the smallest and most intimate weddings of the year on September 18, Bell's birthday. With only 150 guests, each bride and groom was limited to only about 30 guests apiece. The California wedding celebration, which was Bell's birthday, was the hot ticket of the season, Bell said. And with the limited guest list, friends of the brides and grooms were calling in advance to gain entry "like it was a concert," Bell says laughing. Other top weddings of the year included rap star Juvenile, a.k.a. Terius Gray, and nurse Shadonna Jones in New Orleans; Bishop Ernestine Reems to Theotis Dickerson on Valentine's Day weekend; and football great Eddie George to SWV vocalist Tamara Johnson on Father's Day.

So with a canopy of stars as a backdrop, celebrity couples in 2004 exchanged vows amid hopes and dreams for many more moonlight nights of love in their futures.